Monday, 27 April 2009

I've decided to produce a series of illustrations based on the Seven Deadly Sins as an extension of my recent character drawings. I want to create these images quite quickly, limiting any computer work.

Today, as part of the preperation for our exhibition in Japan, Yuki's father came in to college and took a video of us introducing ourselves, and then spending 15 minutes creating an illustration with the theme of A Symbol of Japan, which he is then taking back with him to Japan as part of the promotion for our exhibiton. I really enjoyed having to produce something in such a short space of time. My Japanese-themed illustration was of Godzilla and a sumo wrestler eating sushi infront of Mount Fuji! I was able to take a quick photo of my drawing before he took it away with him. Sayonara!

Sunday, 26 April 2009

I've been sorting through my sketchbook today looking for images to use for the Illustration Symposium in a few weeks, and found this drawing that I did near the start of the MA course when we had a drawing day in the studio and everyone bought an item along for people to draw. I quite like it, especially the colouring...

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

I've been feeling a bit restless today, and not quite sure what to do next, so decided to do some quick drawings just to loosen up my brain a little and try out a few things. Here's a quick drawing I sketched onto brown paper and coloured by hand which was something I wanted to try after seeing my friend Li Jung's circus drawings on brown paper. And I finally found a use for the white pen I bought ages ago too...

This week's topic for Illustration Friday is "Impossibility". I don't know if it was because I'd just finished my recent porcine-related drawing, but this immediately made me think of perhaps the ultimate expression for when something is so unlikely that it seems a complete impossibility: "Pigs might fly...!"

A group of students from the Illustration MA are taking part in an exhibition to be held in Osaka, Japan, being organised by my classmate Yuki and her father who lives in Japan. I decided to create a new piece for the exhibition and so designed my own poster for a Japanese giant monster movie: Yukisaurus vs. Robo-Man!

Robo-Man was inspired by my recent drawing for our Illustration Discussion group. And I must also say a special thank you to my friend Kazu for providing me with the Japanese translation on the right, which says something along the lines of "Watch two giant monsters fight!" (I forget what the exact phrase I asked her if she could translate was...).

After drawing the characters and the lettering, I spent quite a bit of time trying to create the background. After many unsuccessful attempts to draw realistic-looking fire, I began looking for online references, and then thought that rather than trying to recreate the look of a photo of fire, I might as well actually use a photo of fire, so looked online for free-to-use images and finally found a picture of a raging fire and a sky that I was happy with and combined them for my background. I am happy with how this turned out, as I wanted to capture some essence of the slightly "unrefined" appearance of some of the best giant monster movies...

I've been working on an illustration for the second DIY WOMP exhibition which will be held next month at 93 Feet East's Pink Bar in Brick Lane, London. The theme for the exhibition, rather fittingly, was Pink. My intial idea was to create a single image containing a variety of pink-related characters, items and objects, but after doing some work on this, it just wasn't working for me. While I was happy with some of the inidividual drawings, they just weren't working together. Then I hit upon the idea of using the drawings I was happiest with individually, and creating a series of illustrations. I also wanted to experiment a bit with a new method of working, so decided to go out and take some photographs around London and use these as the backgrounds to place my illustrated characters within. I ended up creating a series of 4 images:

Not that it's particularly relevant in order to understand the images, but just for reference the illustrations/photos are from top to bottom: A pink pig eating pink marshmallows on the monument in the centre of Seven Dials, near Covent Garden; A punk with pink hair eating pink candyfloss by Camden Lock; A pink flamingo checking out the pigeons greedily scoffing food from the bin in a park near Soho; and a pink elephant outside a pub near Seven Dials.

I'm happy with the results and would like to continue playing around with combining my images with photography.

And in an uncanny display of real life imitating art, my friend Arina took this photo over the weekend after I showed her the first image in the series...

Saturday, 11 April 2009

Friday, 10 April 2009

This is my illustration for our MA Discussion Group. The theme was "Robot" so I decided to create an advertisement for The Amazing Breakfast-O-Matic: a robot designed to create the perfect breakfast...yep, it's definitely a robot. Honest!! *ahem*

I drew the image and lettering by hand, then scanned some foil and added it to the image in Photoshop to create texture and the metallic look of the "robot". Finally I printed out the image and coloured it by hand using marker pen.

Yet another birthday card. This time it was for a friend's 30th birthday, so I wanted to do something a bit special, so created an image that went on the front and back of the card (this is it opened out). My friend's name is Ammo Dhillon, which sounds a bit like Armadillo, and because it was her 30th birthday, I decided to draw 30 Armadillos having a pary! (this seemed like a great idea before I started it, but half way through I began wishing she was only 7...!)